Dear Colleague,
The Inter-American Institute on Disability (IID) is organizing the 1st.
Inter-American Dialog on Disability and Development, to be held in August
26-27, 2000, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as part of the official calendar of
activities of the IXX World Congress of Rehabilitation International-RI2000
and your agency is being invite to participate.
The main goal of the event is to bring together government agencies, consumer
organizations and international agencies that operate in the Inter-American
region to evaluate existing programs/initiatives and to develop strategies to
increase cooperation for the next 10 years. Please find below some more
details on the event.
The IID is a non-profit organization, founded and managed by disabled people
and their allies, to empower people with all kinds of disabilities and their
families in the Inter-American region, and also in Spanish and Portuguese
speaking countries of Europe and Africa. Our mission is to act as a catalyst
and a broker, forging partnerships to improve cooperation for disability and
development.
If your agency would like to be part of this unique event, please contact us
immediately to discuss topics of mutual interest to be considered for the
agenda. Space is limited and we want to be as inclusive as possible.
Simultaneous interpretation from/to English, Spanish and Portuguese will be
provided.
We are looking forward to your active involvement!
My best regards,
Rosangela Berman Bieler
President
Inter-American Institute on Disability (IID)
Headquarters, Washington, DC
711 Brent Road
Rockville, MD 20850 EUA
Tel.: 1(301) 838-3031
Fax: 1(301) 838-3029
Email: iidisab@aol.com
Web site: www.iidisability.org (under construction)
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Inter-American Dialog on Disability & Development
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Place
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IID is organizing the 1st Inter-American Dialog on Disability and
Development, to be held in August 26-27, 2000, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as
part of the official calendar of activities of the IXX World Congress of
Rehabilitation International-RI2000.
Since this event will be part of the RI program, there will be no
registration fees, other than the one for the RI World Congress.
For Information & Registrations contact:
C & M - Congresses and Meetings
Rua Marques 3/101
22260-240, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Tel/ Fax: 55-21-539-1214
Email: cm@cxpostal.com.br
www.ri.org.br
Goal
-------------------------------------------------------
The main goal of the event is to bring together government agencies, consumer
organizations and international agencies that operate in the Inter-American
region to evaluate existing programs/initiatives and to develop strategies to
increase cooperation for the next 10 years. Please find below some more
details on the event.
Why attend?
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The reasons why agencies should attend this meeting are:
1- Development agencies normally have sparse information on
activities/organizations on disability issues in Latin America. Because of
this fact, some opportunities for cooperation have been missed;
2- There have been no opportunities for a dialog involving all the actors in
disability and development programs in the field;
3- Very few meetings on the topic have been held in developing countries,
especially in Latin America. Taking into consideration the unique opportunity
of the RI2000 this is a unique occasion to establish a productive dialog and
new partnerships involving a number of key organizations from the region and
also those groups, which operate globally.
4- Having the meeting combined with such a significant international meeting
(RI2000), where delegations of more than 100 countries will be attending
(3000-4000 participants are expected) it's a strategy than can benefit all:
· International agencies can benefit from the opportunity to learn from the
whole conference and to establish new partnerships;
· Many of the invited agencies are already enrolled in activities during
the RI2000;
· IID is a part of the RI2000 organizing and scientific committees and
would like to use the opportunity of having such a selected group of
potential speakers to involve them with other development related activities
also in the RI2000;
· This approach could prove cost beneficial to your organization as you
will be able to make many linkages and connections.
Who should attend?
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IID is contacting key NGO's, government and local funding agencies in Latin
America as well as international development agencies such as:
Funding Agencies
(many of them are already confirmed to be in Rio for the RI Congress)
· World Bank
· Inter-American Development Bank
· Inter-American Foundation/ Inter-American Institute of the Child
· Organization of American States/Trust of the Americas
· United Nations/UNICEF/UNESCO/ILO/WHO/PAHO
· USIA
· USAID
· Kellogg Foundation
· Real Patronato de Prevención y de Atención a las Personas con
Minusvalias, Spain
· ONCE Foundation, Spain
· IMSERSO, Spain
· CIDA (Canada)
· Associazione Italiana Amici di Raoul Follereau (AIFO)
· Appropriate Health Resources & Technologies Action Group (AHRTAG)
· Action on Disability and Development (ADD)
· Danish Council of Organizations of Disabled People (DSI)
· Interactions pour le Développement (ID)
· Norwegian Association of the Disabled (NAD)
· Swedish Handicap Institute
· Save the Children Fund
· Handicap International
· Swedish Organization of the Handicapped International Aid Foundation
(SHIA)
· ICCO
· Among other…
International/Regional NGOs
(most of them are already confirmed to be in Rio for the RI Congress)
· Rehabilitation International
· International Deaf Federation
· Disabled People's International
· World Blind Union
· Inclusion International
· Ashoka Foundation
· Mobility International USA
· World Institute on Disability, USA
· Partners of the Americas
· Whirlwind Wheelchair International, USA
· GLARP
· Among other…
What is the IID
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The Inter-American Institute on Disability (IID) is a non-profit entity,
founded and managed by disabled people and their allies, to empower people
with all kinds of disabilities and their families in the Inter-American
region, and also in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Europe and
Africa.
The purpose of the Institute is to interface between public and private
organizations and service providers, stimulating international and
multi-cultural cooperation and awareness for disability development in the
Inter-American Region as a whole.
IID's approach includes, but is not limited to:
1) the dissemination of information on disability and;
2) the fostering of cooperation between international, regional and local
governmental and non-governmental entities working with disability.
With its central office located in Washington, DC, USA, the Institute
maintains on-going contact with Inter-American bodies located in the same
area, such as World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Organization of
the American States, among others.
The IID Regional Office for Latin America is located in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, and its mission is to develop and to promote IID's activities within
the region.
Other than its Central and Regional Offices the Institute will be creating
branches and/or country representation (in partnership with local entities)
in the related sub-regions: Andean Region, Central America, Southern Cone,
Europe, Africa.
The IID is initially developing communications support and public information
activities that aim to build greater awareness and understanding of the
situation of disabled people in the target region.
Among its current activities, IID produces an on-line newsletter, in Spanish,
Portuguese and English, on relevant information for its network on disability
issues, distributed through the Internet to almost 15000 people, including
direct subscribers and forwarded messages to several other listservs.
The Institute acts directly as a contractor and broker (training, project
development...) for government, service providers and the population of
people with disabilities, and also provides support, making subsidies
available to other entities and service providers, trends analysis, opening
new communication channels, enabling partnerships and promoting new efforts.
Economic development activities, such as micro-credit loans for people with
disabilities are part of the agenda of the IID.
Examples of current projects of IID,
in collaboration with organizations in the Region:
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· DisabilityWorld (www.disabilityworld.org)
DisabilityWorld is a new e-zine dedicated to advancing an exchange of
information and research about the international disability rights and
independent living movement. The Webzine is the heart of a larger project,
IDEAS for the New Millennium, funded in 1999 by the U.S. National Institute
on Disability & Rehabilitation Research as a five-year project.
The IDEAS project, headed by the World Institute on Disability (WID) based in
Oakland, California, is being conducted as a collaborative effort with the
participation of other U.S. based disability groups:
· the Independent Living Research Unit (ILRU) of The Institute for
Rehabilitation Research, based in Houston, Texas;
· Rehabilitation International (RI), based in New York, New York;
· Whirlwind Wheelchair International (WWI), based in Berkeley, California,
and
· the Inter-American Institute on Disability(IID), based in Washington,
D.C.
The IDEAS project leaders selected five main content areas to track during
the five-year period: independent living (WID); employment (ILRU); media
(RI); technology & accessibility (WWI); and governance (WID).
The IID, which is also a co-editor of the e-zine, will be responsible for
information on these topics in the Spanish language and from Latin America.
The crosscutting topic of disabled women's activities in these five areas
will be reported. Initiatives benefiting disabled children and youth will
also be covered.
For the first couple years of the project, we will concentrate on collecting
and analyzing information on the following 10 countries where we know there
is significant activity in the five content areas: Britain, Germany and
Russia; India, Japan and New Zealand; Brazil and Nicaragua; South Africa and
Uganda.
· I.T.: Employment for People with Disabilities
The Trust for the Americas, a non-profit organization affiliated with the
Organization of American States through its Inter-American Agency for
Cooperation and Development (IACD), in partnership with the Inter-American
Institute on Disability (IID), received awards from the World Bank's infoDev
and Development Marketplace for its Net Corps Americas project "I.T.:
Employment for People with Disabilities." (info:
www.developmentmarketplace.org)
This project will send high-tech volunteers to Central America to train
people with disabilities to use the new information technologies and it is
the first step by The Trust for the Americas to implement the Inter-American
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Persons
with Disabilities, adopted by the OAS at its General Assembly in 1999. The
project was awarded a total of $139,000 - $89,000 from the Development
Marketplace and $50,000 from infoDev.
The goal of the Development Marketplace's competition is to foster innovative
ideas in the development community. For its part, infoDev is a global grant
program managed by the World Bank that aims to address obstacles facing
developing countries in an increasingly information-driven world economy.
Approximately three hundred finalists, out of some 1,500 proposals,
participated in the two-day competition at the World Bank. Forty-five were
selected to receive the Development Marketplace Award and two received the
infoDev award.